by J. L. Doty
They looked at York and he said, “Do it.”
He stood, and all but the empress and the d’Hart woman stood with him,. “Thank you. Dismissed.”
He turned and stepped through the door to his office. He was anxious to see the results of the program he’d left running during the staff meeting and he sat down immediately behind the terminal at his desk. On the screen were the words:
Abort threshold exceeded, search discontinued.
Success correlation: 10%
Items matched: 231
He shook his head sadly, touched a key and the first of the two hundred and thirty-one names appeared on the screen: Kallear Matchek
Perhaps old Maja had merely guessed at the spelling of the man’s name, so he’d refined the search to include names phonetically similar to Collier Maczek. And he could make a reasonable guess at the man’s age, and there had to be some sort of record of him on Dumark. York had slowly put together a complicated search filter, but even that resulted in too many names for him to review with any kind of alacrity. So during stolen moments he took them in small groups, pulled up each name and reviewed what was known—which often was almost nothing. Most of the names he flagged as solid rejects, and a few he retained as possibilities, usually because there was not enough known to properly eliminate the man.
“That’s curious,” a soft voice said.
He started, looked up and back, found the d’Hart woman looking over his shoulder. At his reaction she straightened up quickly. “I’m sorry, Captain. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
He blanked the screen, stood up and faced her, tried not to look guilty. But she was visibly embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “You left the door open. And I wanted a word with you. And when I looked in you were so engrossed with your work I thought I’d step in and wait until you were ready to be interrupted. And then I caught a glimpse of the name on your screen and it reminded me of a man I once knew, though the spelling was different . . .” She suddenly stiffened, straightened, resumed the cold, impersonal persona of the Lady d’Hart. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
He lied. “I was just reviewing the files of a crewman.” Had she recognized the name somehow? “But you say you know him?”
She shook her head. “No. I knew another man a long time ago, when I was a little girl. The spelling of his name was different.” She quickly spelled out the name, and it was the spelling old Maja had given him. For some reason she felt the need to explain her intrusion, and as York’s heart raced he dare not stop her. “Actually I didn’t know him. I just saw him a few times about the old palace. I was young, and romantic, and he was devoted to a beautiful woman named Francesca Ballinov . . .”
York felt giddy, to search so hard, and then to have it suddenly dropped in his lap like this.
“Are you all right, Captain?”
The d’Hart woman looked at him oddly, and he realized he must have let something show. “How did you say his name?” he asked.
“Collier Maczek.”
At that point they both retreated, and he knew he’d get no more out of her without arousing suspicion. He bent over his desk, retrieved the bottle of trate from the bottom drawer. He held it up in trembling hands. “Can I offer you something to drink? It’s only trate. I wish I could offer you better, but this is all I’ve got.”
She lifted an eyebrow and seemed about to disapprove, but then she shrugged, laughed at herself a little, and the stiff persona disappeared again. “Why not?”
He mixed them two drinks and handed her one. As she sipped at hers he asked, “You wanted a word with me.”
She grinned and tossed down the last of her drink. “You and your officers always refer to the captain of that hunter-killer as she or her. Why not he or him?”
“I hadn’t thought about it. It just seems right.”
“Does it give you more confidence to think you’re in a battle of skills with a woman?”
“No. She’s good, too good for me to feel a lot of confidence.”
“But you’re certain it’s a woman?”
“I’m not certain of anything.”
She nodded, grinned and looked him over carefully. “Thank you, Captain.”
“For what?”
“For letting me know you’re human.” She turned and quietly left him there.
When she was gone he stood there for a moment, knowing he’d missed something, but not really caring because, without knowing it, she’d given him the name of his mother.
The alert klaxon woke Meekl Donohae from stim-sleep, the lights in her coffin flashed to full brightness, and the voice of that handsome young officer blared over allship, telling them to report to battle stations. Coffin—that’s what the veterans called a sealed bunk compartment, and she remembered not to sit up immediately and slam her nose against the ceiling only centimeters above her face. The bloody nose she’d gotten before her first drill had been a supreme embarrassment.
She was the rookie on the J-deck, niner station pod crew, and was therefore assigned the top bunk, which meant she had to wait longest for her coffin to cycle out of storage. She tried to calm herself, to slow her racing heart, because she desperately wanted to make a good showing. Her simulation scores were improving rapidly, and she was hoping during the next drill, this drill . . .
It was then that the young officer’s words hit her. “. . . This is not a drill. I repeat: this is not a drill . . .”
She didn’t hear anything else until her coffin suddenly cycled into the bunkroom and her reflexes took over. She sat up and at the same time killed the grav field in her bunk; let the deck gravity start her into a fall toward the deck. By hooking one hand on the edge of her bunk, she spun herself so she landed on her feet like a veteran with dozens of kill chevrons cut into the skin of her arm.
She hit the deck in panties and bra, a one-piece coverall tucked in her left hand, took only a few seconds to get her legs into it, then sprinted up the corridor trying to get her arms into the upper half. She got it in place just as she reached her station.
Chief Syda glanced over his shoulder at her, gave her an approving nod as she dove for her pod hatch. She scrambled up the zero-G tube toward the outer skin of the ship, slipped into the couch in her pod with practiced ease, tore on her headset, wished she had implants like the officers and the more experienced crew, strapped herself in place and threw the switch that sealed the pod.
Comp was already running her pod through precombat check. She scanned the readout, watched closely as the status check ran its course, and the instant it was complete she slapped the active switch. She was on station.
She scanned her screens: guidance and ballistic control, ordinance, fire control, three tracking screens . . . A chill ran up her spine; there was a large yellow blip on her tracking screens about three hundred million kilometers distant. An enemy warship. No simulation, but a real enemy that could throw a warhead at them large enough to split a small moon. And as she looked on the yellow blip spit out a smaller yellow blip: a transition launch, aimed at Cinesstar, aimed at her. The shooting had already begun, no time for reassuring words from the old man, no time to think herself into a calm. She started to tremble, and almost lost control of her bladder.
Cinesstar’s hull thrummed with the sound of one of the main turrets slamming a barrage of shells into transition, and a small green blip appeared on her screens headed for the enemy ship. More yellow blips from the enemy ship, one after the other; more green blips from Cinesstar with the hull starting to sound like a giant reverberation chamber. And then suddenly one of the yellow blips turned red, her targeting computer began tracking, her firing console lit up like a field of landing beacons on a dark night, and a timer on her screen started counting down from five. She’d been allocated a target, and she had five seconds to kill it, five seconds in which to confirm the computers firing sequence or to override and track it herself, five seconds before it killed them all . . . and she froze.
At the last i
nstant the hull thrummed with a more intense beat as one of her station mates took the target. She began hyperventilating and wanted to cry, and then Chief Syda’s voice came over her headset, calm and easy, no derision, no judgment. “Calm down, Meekl. It’s no different from a drill. Keep your head, stay cool, and try again.”
On her next allocated target she overrode the computer and fired immediately, missed and fired again, and again. She lost count of the number of rounds she wasted, didn’t hit a thing, still needed one of her station mates to take the target.
On her third target she only wasted two rounds, though one of the other stations took it out. But on her fourth target she held on, let the computer track it and monitored the trajectory closely. It was a miss, so she let it go, didn’t waste anything.
Without warning the hull screamed at her, and a shock wave passed through the ship. It took her a few seconds to realize Cinesstar had taken a hit. She switched her com to damage control for a moment, heard something about minor damage aft, then switched back to the station. She got another target with a six-second trajectory. The computer was targeting for a close-in shot, but she decided to try a long shot, overrode and fired. She didn’t hit it; not a real kill, but the detonation of her pod-shot deflected it. One of her station mates broke into her com line, “At a girl, Meekl,” and she flushed with pride.
The battle turned into a chase. The enemy was a smaller ship with just a bit less range in her main batteries, though she managed to sting Cinesstar a few times. But she was outgunned and she took to her heels and ran, and Cinesstar followed. Twice Meekl had more than one target to deal with, and she came close to panicking again. But she didn’t, and with help from her station mates they took care of the targets.
The enemy warship took a hit from one of Cinesstar’s main batteries, and then they started to sting her regularly. And then suddenly the enemy blossomed into a bright orange flower on Meekl’s screens, and the battle was over. And they were alive. She was alive. The order came from the bridge to go to watch condition yellow, and she started to cry.
She was still crying when the old man’s voice came over allship. “This is Captain Ballin. We took some minor damage aft and amidships. There are some casualties but we don’t have a full count yet.”
He paused, and she could imagine him leaning over his console deep in thought, that strange steel eye of his staring with such intensity at his screens. “You fought valiantly,” he continued. “You burned that feddie so she couldn’t give away our position and call half the Directorate down on us. I’m proud of you. Every last one of you.”
A shiver ran up Meekl’s spine. The old man seemed to be done, but then, as if it were an afterthought, “Oh yes! You beat one minute. You were on station in ninety-eight seconds. Congratulations. A new record. Next time we’ll try to beat ninety.”
It was a victory celebration, or at least that’s what the rookies and the civilians thought. York had ordered that a limited crew of seasoned veterans man all stations, and that everyone else, crew and civilians and nobility alike, eat at the same time in the main mess, a rather crowded banquet. He’d had the seating carefully arranged, with a select group seated at the captain’s table, the empress on his right, then Olin Rame, then Princess Aeya, then Maggie, then Lady Dubye, then Frank, then Sarra Fithwallen. Sylissa d’Hart was on his left, then Straegga, then the old queen mother, then Gant, then Andow, then Temerek, then Brentin Omasin.
Sierka and the AI Major were seated with the other officers, though not at the captain’s table. Even the feddie breed warrior Sab’ach’ahn and Governor Andleman were there, under guard. It was all carefully done by rank, with some help from the d’Hart woman to insure that the nobility were seated properly. There had been only a little juggling for York’s preferences, and a little more to insure every civilian and rookie sat close to a veteran.
Dinner was pleasant. Even Aeya managed to avoid baiting York. As dinner came to an end the Dubye slut was making her moves on poor Frank, while Maggie visibly ignored the situation. Sylissa d’Hart asked York, “Where are we now, Captain?”
York nodded toward Gant. “Anda, you’re probably better able to answer that.”
Gant glanced at her watch, thought carefully for a moment. “Right now we’re about six light-years short of the front lines, about two days at our present drive. We could move faster, but we’re being cautious, running silent, slow, and careful. We’d like to avoid interception by pickets on either side.”
Andow asked, “Are we likely to have to fight our way past any more Directorate warships.”
York nodded slowly. “Hopefully, the ship we engaged this morning was sublight to get a navigational fix, just pure luck. In transition they’d never have spotted us.”
“You said hopefully?”
Temerek answered him. “There’s a good chance Anachron IV alerted the Directorate to our position. They could then order all ships in the vicinity to down-transit and sit in sublight, waiting and watching for us. If they did that, then it wasn’t luck, and we’ll run into more.”
The festive atmosphere that had lasted through dinner disappeared. York said, “That’s partly the reason we ran parallel to the lines for almost ninety light-years. I wanted to get out of the vicinity of Anachron IV. We also ran a bit off course for Aagerbanne. And it’s likely that feddie warship reported our position before engaging us. So we’ve changed course again, and are going to run parallel to the lines for a few more light-years before turning to cross. And I don’t know how often we may have to repeat that process. A crossing directly opposite Aagerbanne or Sarasan would be too obvious.”
The conversation at the table broke up into small groups. Sylissa d’Hart leaned toward York, pointed to the small plast cup at the top of her place setting, whispered, “Tell me, Captain, what’s that cup for? I’ve noticed there’s one like it for each and every one of us. And I’ve also noticed that, quite a number of times this evening, when anyone reaches for that cup, someone seated next to them politely tells them not to touch it.” There was a small, almost unnoticeable grin on her lips, and a glint in her eyes. “What are you up to?”
In his other ear, the empress whispered, “Yes, Captain. What are you up to?”
York glanced around the table, then around the mess hall, and with few exceptions everyone had finished dinner. He rose to his feet. The other officers at the table started to stand. “As you were,” he said quietly, and they lowered themselves back into their seats.
The moment he stood Palevi appeared in the mess hall entrance on queue, and at the same time several mess orderlies began moving among the tables, pouring a small amount of trate into each cup. Several rookies and civilians started to reach for their cup, but a nearby veteran stopped them. Most of the crew had instantly stopped speaking; the civilians and some of the rookies were a little slower to react, and several seconds passed while the background murmur slowly died.
One of the orderlies handed Palevi a cup, poured some trate into it. Then they served themselves, and last they served York, filling his cup generously.
York let the final, complete silence fall among them all, and then he let it draw out until it was thick and heavy with anticipation. Then he reached forward and picked up the cup, looked at the clear liquid swirling within it. He scanned the room slowly, then said, “Today two of our comrades died. But previously there were a number of others, and while they have been buried at space, it has come to my attention they have not been properly laid to rest.
“In the plast cup at your place is a small amount of trate. By custom it was made in a still on this ship while in deep space, not on another ship, and especially not on the surface of a planet. Also by custom it’s strong, only slightly diluted.”
York looked again at the fluid in his cup, then at Palevi. He gave the sergeant a slight nod.
Palevi snapped to attention so rigidly his entire body quivered like spring steel. Then he bellowed in his loudest parade ground voice, startling quite a n
umber of those present, “Atteeuun . . . shuuuuun!”
The veterans in the crowd shot to their feet instantly. The rookies were slower to react, and they moved with some hesitation, but eventually every crewmember stood and tried to imitate Palevi’s spring-steel rigidity. Most of the civilians remained seated. York looked around slowly. “Please,” he said. “All of you. Please stand.”
Lady d’Hart and the empress stood without hesitation, and one by one the others followed suit.
“Sergeant,” York called.
“Sir,” Palevi bellowed back.
“Have the names been inscribed on the hull of the ship?”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“Very good, Sergeant. Then call the roll.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Holding the cup in one hand, the marine held up a piece of paper in the other. He read from it.
“Spacer Apprentice Andis Bannaer.”
“Here, sir,” one of the veterans called out.
“Private First Class Misorrdah Coemak . . .”
Slowly, one by one, he called out each name and someone responded. And each carried its own message, until eventually an unhappy sorrow settled over them all. Sometimes those who knew a particular name winced, and occasionally someone shed a tear or two, but for the most part it was merely farewell. And when Palevi finished the last name a silence descended that seemed oddly devoid of the sorrow that gripped them moments earlier.
York looked at the clear liquid in his cup, then lifted it to his lips. One small sip, and the trate burned its way down his throat, almost bringing tears to his eyes. Then he held the cup out in front of him at arm’s length, and in a loud voice he spoke the words, “For them it’s over. For us it goes on.”
Slowly, carefully, he tipped the cup to one side. The liquid drizzled over the edge in a small, steady stream, spattering widely as it hit the plast tabletop. It spattered all over York’s uniform, all over Sylissa d’Hart and the empress, all over those near them. To the credit of the rest of them, Aeya was the only one to cringe away from the spattering, trying to protect herself behind her napkin.
